"With the endings of sentences on the tapes the voice can only belong to a Ch'ti or a Picard," read the judgment, implying the true singer must have originated from north-eastern France, an area which produced both the Picard dialect and the affectionately mocked Ch'ti patois.

The producer of the track - Lou Deprijck - has a Ch'ti twang, and, you won't be surprised to hear, is claiming that he was the singer. His claim is that the record label didn't think he had the charisma to carry off the song and so parachuted Bertrand in as a stylish front man.

This was 1970s Europe, and this, then, was what passed for stylish.

The case will grind on and on; Roger Jouret - no, it turns out he wasn't really called Plastic - insists that it is him, and he's not going to give away the piles of cash the song has made him without a fight.